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Prestel
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Part of an accessibly written and generously illustrated series on architecture through the ages, this book features the Renaissance period's most important architects, buildings and cities, interior and exterior photographs, detailed images, and drawings and plans. The book offers a general introduction to the period and discusses the primary characteristics of the style, along with commonly used techniques and materials. Renaissance began in fifteenth-century Italy as an attempt to revive Rome's Golden Age. Its orderly use of columns, domes, arches, and entablatures recalls classic Roman architecture, but adapted for contemporary use in churches and urban dwellings. Some of the most recognizable Renaissance structures are the Chateau de Fontainebleau, the Ducal Palace at Urbino, England's Greenwich Hospital, and St. Peter's Cathedral in Vatican City. |
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The Makart PeriodA of the late nineteenth century is known as an era of sumptuous beauty and opulence in Vienna. Hans Makart, after whom the period was named, became a national icon in Austria-a rock star of the art world whose paintings, interior design, theatrical sets and costumes were celebrated as much for their style as for the status they exemplified. This catalogue to an exhibit of Makart's works includes his legendary room in the Palais Dumba, his monumental paintings, and his controversial and subversive erotic works. The large-scale theatric quality of Makart's work is evident in the stunning reproductions featured in the book, which allow viewers to appreciate the brilliant palette of his oeuvre. |
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One of America's most important artists, Robert Rauschenberg consistently fuses painting, found art, photography and printing in his works. This book brings together 60 of Rauschenburg's most exciting posters. Arranged thematically and chronologically, the posters display the full range of Rauschenberg's stylistic development from the 1960s to the 1990s. Since 1963 the artist has been designing posters to advertise his own exhibitions, music and dance performances, and to address sociopolitical issues. This volume features full page, colour reproductions that allow the viewer to truly appreciate the complexity, ambiguity and incredible scope of Rauschenberg's oeuvre. |
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The Nigerian film industry is the third largest in the world, after those of the United States and India. Nigerian films often deal with the moral dilemmas facing modern Africans today and tell stories familiar to African families: of religion, violence, AIDS, and economic hardship. Much as he did with his previous book, the hugely successful The Hyena & Other Men, Pieter Hugo documents the intense and incredibly colorful world of Nollywood from an unusual angle. His images are staged representations of Nigerian film sets, featuring local actors who recreate themes and characters from Nollywood films: young men in military fatigues; witch doctors, healers and saints; hunters with their kill; prostitutes in their rooms. The result is a series of surreal tableaux rooted in local symbolic imagery. Accompanying the photographs are texts by Chris Abani, whose short fiction piece captures the chaos of the filmmaking process, and an essay by Zina Saro-Wiwa on Nollywood's explosive growth and what it means to Nigerians. Presented in a simple and restrained format, Hugo's gorgeous photographs reveal a little-known phenomenon to a wider audience. |
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This book of a major travelling exhibition of the same name includes nearly 100 works by the famous masters during the mid-19th century, and from whose midst arose one of the most original and recognisable of all artistic styles, Impressionism. This exhibition begins with paintings by naturalist artists such as Bougereau and Courbet and presents American expatriate James McNeil Whistler's Arrangement in Gray and Black, known to many as Whistler's Mother. Early work by Manet, Monet, Renoir and Sisley are included as well as a selection of Degas' paintings that depict images of the ballet, the racetrack and life in la Belle Aepoque. Notable works in this book include The Fife Player by Edouard Manet (1866), Family Reunion by Frederic Bazille (1867), Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1 or Portrait of the Artist's Mother by James McNeil Whistler (1871), The Birth of Venus by William Adolphe Bouguereau (1879), The Cradle by Berthe Morisot (1872), Saint-Lazare Station by Claude Monet (1877), The Swing by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1876), Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878 by Claude Monet, Racehorses Before the Stands by Edgar Degas (1866-1868), The Dancing Lesson by Edgar Degas (1873-1876), Portraits at the Stock Exchange by Edgar Degas (1878-1879). |
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Martin Ramirez created nearly 450 drawings of remarkable visual clarity and expressive power while confined in a California mental institution for more than twenty-five years. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, he achieved posthumous fame with recent exhibitions of his works. Eighty important drawings, culled from public and private collections, comprehensively survey his achievement and demonstrate that he was one of the great draftsmen of the twentieth century. The richness of Ramirez's drawings and the depth of historical and cultural influences in his work point to his deep engagement with society. The artist's unique process-employing found items, homemade pigments, matchsticks, and large swaths of paper is explored, as are his personal experiences of poverty, exile, and confinement. The volume includes recent research about Ramirez's life, family, and art, and features examples from a cache of previously unknown drawings by Ramirez, whose discovery caused a great sensation. This dazzling book displays Ramirez's skill and inventiveness and shows why his work is worthy of its own place in the annals of modern art. |
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The world as seen through Kalman's eyes is a quirky, slightly off-kilter place as colourful and varied as a kaleidoscope. For decades this brilliant artist has captured our hearts with her whimsical illustrations and engaged our minds with her trenchant observations. A companion to a travelling exhibition, this monograph on Kalman's work features hundreds of paintings, drawings, sketchbook pages, and journal entries as well as rarely glimpsed photographs, stills from performance pieces, and examples of her newest project, embroidery. Kalman was born in Tel Aviv in 1949 and moved to New York at the age of four. Among her varied body of work are illustrated books for children and adults, clocks she designed with her late husband Tibor Kalman, columns for The New York Times, fabrics for Maharam and Isaac Mizrahi, and sets for the choreographer Mark Morris. In this book, Kalman offers commentary on her life as an artist, collector, observer, traveller, and maker of lists, while essays by curator Ingrid Schaffner and art historian Kenneth Silver explore her unique gift for distilling the extraordinary from the merely ordinary. From the youngest readers to the most discerning critics, Kalman's many admirers will embrace this wonderful celebration of a life dedicated to making art. |
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In her work, Bourgeois used materials ranging from rubber, wood, fabric, and metal to glass, paper, cement and marble, through which the stories of her own life resonated with the lives of others. This generously illustrated book presents the complete cycle of CellA installations from the 1990s until a short time before Bourgeois' death in 2010. In these contained environments Bourgeois reflected on the human tendency toward isolation and her own memories. The book also places this work in the context of Bourgeois' life as an artist, including her youth as the daughter of Parisian textile workers, her studies with Fernand Leger and her experiences with the leading artists of the New York School in the 40s and 50s. |
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One of the original celebrity artists, Titian was as famous for his beguiling personality as he was for his masterful paintings. This book introduces readers to the Venetian artist with an innovative format that marries Titian's voice with his works, allowing the artist's own words to deepen the appreciation of his achievements. An illustrated timeline and a pictorial tour of the galleries where his works now reside reveal how this contemporary of Michelangelo and Raphael broke new ground in nearly every genre of painting: portraiture, altar pieces, the rendering of mythological themes, frescoes, and pastoral landscapes. Numerous superb reproductions illuminate not just the breadth of his oeuvre, but also the mastery with which he employed light and colour to lend his paintings the sensuous energy for which he is so admired. Norbert Wolf's engaging text unlocks many of the mysteries surrounding Titian's celebrity, making this journey into the artist's world as intriguing as it is informative. |
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Whether the incredible pieces of haute couture were designed by Chanel, Dior, Gaultier or Valentino, their beauty is preserved in the gorgeous large-format images captured with Polaroid cameras by Cathleen Naundorf and collected in this book. Her well-honed technique, which combines instant film's distinctive colours and shadow with the artist's remarkable instinct, results in photographs that resemble paintings — haunting, muted, and raw. Not only are they a feast for fashion-hungry eyes, but they are also a testament to the talents of this young artist who has forged a formidable reputation in the fashion world. |
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Claude Monet's green lily ponds, a red studio by Henri Matisse, the bright purple of a Georgia O'Keeffe flower — the vibrant colours of artistic masterpieces are presented in the form of simple jigsaw puzzles that will entice the youngest readers. Each spread in the book features a reproduction of a famous painting accompanied by a brief explanatory text and a 16-piece puzzle of the artwork. Arranged thematically, this playful activity book introduces young children to a wonderful rainbow of great art. |
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Thanks to innovations in colour lithography, the streets of fin-de-siecle Paris were punctuated with brightly hued posters featuring bold typography and playful imagery. Many of these posters were torn down almost as soon as they were pasted up, finding their way into private homes and, eventually, museums and collections all over the world. Although many artists contributed to the affichomanie, or poster craze, one of the most famous among them was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. This gorgeous book offers exquisite reproductions of more than one hundred posters, including those by Lautrec and his contemporaries Bonnard, Picasso, Cheret and Mucha. Advertising everything from tony theatre productions to the licentious cancan, bicycles to biscuits, these posters range from cheerfully exuberant to slyly decadent. In her essay, Mary Weaver Chapin captures the voices of the artists, collectors and critics who fuelled the poster craze of the 1890s. The result is a visual spectacle, a lively discourse on the value and purpose of art, and a celebration of a historically and creatively dynamic era. |
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The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton helped reclaim the fashion cred of Britain's royal family, ushering in a generation of hip but genial personalities that appeal to every age and station. But royals have been setting fashion trends for centuries. This fascinating overview of aristocratic icons reaches back to the middle age, and from Europe to the Middle East, to profile the most renowned promoters of elegance and style ever to don their empires' crowns. Author and royals watcher Luise Wackerl juxtaposes the fifteenth-century Duke of Burgundy's penchant for black with Elizabeth I's taste for virginal white. She presents history's first It Girls: Marie Antoinette, Louisa of Prussia, Empresses Sisi of Austria and Eugenie of France. She relates how Queen Victoria's sorrow and propriety transformed her country, and how an impeccably styled American's love for Edward VIII upended the British monarchy. From the irreproachably elegant styles of Grace Kelly to Lady Diana, Jordan's Queen Rania to Princess Letizia of Spain we move on to the newest icons: couture-loving Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece, Princess Marie of Denmark, and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie of York, whose faces and party antics grace the tabloids on a weekly basis. Hundreds of photos and a lively text make this irresistible reading for anyone interested in fashion, royalty, and the lively intersection of both worlds. |
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The geometric shapes and natural forms, captured with exceptional precision in Ernst Haeckel's prints, still influence artists and designers to this day. This volume highlights the research and findings of this natural scientist. Powerful modern microscopes have confirmed the accuracy of Haeckel's prints, which even in their day, became world famous. Haeckel's portfolio, first published between 1899 and 1904 in separate installments, is described in the opening essays. The plates illustrate Haeckel's fundamental monistic notion of the unity of all living things and the wide variety of forms are executed with utmost delicacy. Incipient microscopic organisms are juxtaposed with highly developed plants and animals. The pages, ordered according to geometric and constructive aspects, document the oness of the world in its most diversified forms. This collection of plates was not only well-received by scientists, but by artists and architects as well. Rene Binet, a pioneer of glass and iron constructions, Emile Galle, a renowned Art Nouveau designer, and the photographer Karl Blossfeld all make explicit reference to Haeckel in their work. |
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Fashion is in the details. The textiles, tailoring, and trimmings all work together in the creation of the finest pieces. Drawing on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's internationally known fashion collection, this gorgeous book tells the story-in words and beautiful pictures-of fashion's aesthetic and technical development from the Age of Enlightenment to World War I, a period when fashionable dress underwent sweeping changes. Many remarkable examples of men's, women's, and children's garments are featured here for the first time, including an extraordinarily rare 1790s man's vest designed to promote sympathy with the French Revolution; a stunning 1845 black satin gown from the royal court of Portugal heavily embroidered with gold; and an 1891 evening mantle with silk embroidery, glass beads, and ostrich feathers designed by French couturier Aemile Pingat. An invaluable resource for anyone interested in the evolution of fashion, this generously illustrated book provides a rich visual history of the changes that occurred in fashionable dress spanning a period of more than two hundred years. |
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These enchanting activity books allow young artists to explore the world's masterpieces on their own terms and with plenty of space to color outside the lines. |
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World War II and its aftermath ushered in a new era of artistic expression. Abstract Expressionism, film noir, Beat poetry, and the New Journalism — all considered responses to war's shocking realities — were influenced by the photography of the period. Street Seen, a companion volume to an exhibition, highlights six photographers who were prominent during and immediately following the war. Lisette Model's unflinching portraits; Louis Faurer's cars, crowds and buildings; Ted Croner's haunting night images; Saul Leiter's painterly, evocative technique; William Klein's manipulation of focus and composition; and Robert Frank's documentation of American ideals gone awry — these and other beautifully reproduced photographs exquisitely communicate the emotional resonance of everyday life in post-war America. An essay by Lisa Hostetler explores the aesthetic revolution that took place after the war and reveals the principles of spontaneity and subjective interpretation that guided these photographers as they sought to make sense of new realities. Brief biographies and bibliography are also included in this valuable compilation of the mid-century's most influential photography. |
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Friedensreich Hundertwasser was an artist, environmentalist, philosopher, humanist, architect, and graphic designer, whose unique style appeals to a wide audience. An essay in words and pictures, this publication takes the reader on a journey in thirteen stages through Hundertwasser's life and work. It explores his native city Vienna in the post-war era, his studio, his travels across Europe, Japan, and the Pacific Rim, as well as his famously unconventional speeches on mould, tree rental, ships, and nuclear energy, some of which he delivered in the nude. Imaginatively designed to capture its subject's inimitable style, this book is a glorious tribute to an artist who appeals to people of all ages. |
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This companion volume to an ambitious retrospective holds a mirror up to the iconic artist whose work so strongly reflected her life. The life and work of Frida Kahlo were inextricably intertwined. This beautiful monograph celebrates the artist while exploring the lesser-known aspects of her story. Reproductions of Kahlo s paintings are accompanied by a series of illuminating essays that explore the artist s private writings and the intense public interest in her life, the role of physical and mental suffering in the creative process, and the coded and double meanings hidden in so much of Kahlo s work. In addition, a photographic essay compiled by her grandniece, Cristina Kahlo, features images from the family s private collection. As an icon of female strength and suffering, Frida Kahlo has become something of an art world myth. This scholarly yet profoundly moving illustrated tribute to her life and work offers a measured perspective that rises above the noise of celebrity to discover the true artist and the truth of her art. |
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At once deeply personal and brilliantly perceptive, this dynamic reconsideration of the life and work of Frida Kahlo is curated by the prominent feminist artist Judy Chicago, who helped introduce American audiences to Kahlo's paintings. For decades Judy Chicago has worked tirelessly to ensure that women's artistic achievements become a permanent part of our cultural heritage. In this sumptuous, large format book, she turns her attention to the work of Frida Kahlo, one of the world's most revered female painters. In this volume Chicago, together with her collaborator, art historian Frances Borzello, has handpicked a selection of Kahlo's work, a hundred portraits that speak to the full spectrum of women's experience. The result is a fascinating conversation between two artistic icons, one that is further enhanced by a dialogue between Chicago and Borzello, an authority on women's portraiture. The book features each work on its own spread, facing commentary by Chicago and Borzello. Essays explore Kahlo's many facets: woman, artist, historical figure, and inspiration. Designed to evoke a Mexican retablo, or altarpiece, this volume reframes Frida Kahlo for a contemporary audience. |
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